NOW TV problems ‘ruin’ Game of Thrones premiere for fans, again

Tuesday, April 14th 2015by Dean Reilly

NOW TV viewers have taken to social media to complain about the Sky-owned streaming service after being unable to watch the season premiere of Game of Thrones – in a repeat of problems encountered last year.

Consumers who tried to view the HBO fantasy drama series on the streaming service in 2014 complained that buffering made most of season four unwatchable.

Now, one day after the UK premiere of season five and after assurances from NOW TV that the service was prepared for the highly anticipated TV event, both new and existing subscribers have complained that the issues have returned.

Customers on the NOW TV forums were concerned that similar problems to those encountered last year might reappear. In a post entitled 'Will there be capacity Problems for Game of Thrones this evening?', NOW TV customer Superlonghurst said that the service "couldn't cope with demand" last year.

The viewer added: "That kinda ruined the evening as I had friends and family over to watch it and we ordered pizza etc etc. We were all ready for the episode Sky Atlantic was running smooth and 10 seconds in the buffer thing came up and 'oops something went wrong' appeared!

"Then the forums exploded with all the people raging. So I hope you've learned and have laid on extra servers or bandwidth or whatever to cope or I'm going to send a faceless man or the hound to come get you!"

Helen Wilkinson of London also used references to the show in her tweet, posting:

Argh! @NOWTV I swear by the old gods and the new that I will throw my TV from the window if it doesn't stop bloody buffering! #GoTAtlantic

Speaking ahead of the anticipated return of the TV series, a NOW TV spokesperson told Cable.co.uk: “Over the last year we’ve invested heavily to provide greater reliability than ever.

"We have dedicated teams on hand to resolve issues quickly and are seeing record levels of viewing and customer satisfaction, as NOW TV grows in popularity.”

This morning, NOW TV community manager Tom-R apologised on the services' forum, and posted links with advice on the different ways viewers can watch the show: live via Sky Atlantic, or on catch up.

He wrote: "Hi Everyone, Although the majority of customers were able to watch without any interruption, we know some customers may have experienced some buffering while watching Game of Thrones Season 5 Episode 1 live last night.

"We're sorry for any inconvenience caused."

Customers who faced issues last year received an email offering them a free Entertainment Pass as a goodwill gesture. The message read: “We’re very sorry you weren’t able to watch NOW TV last night. We’ve been working hard to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“We’d like to offer you a Free Entertainment Month Pass with NOW TV. Your free code is valid until 8th September 2014."

The email contained instructions on how to redeem the Entertainment Pass, and closed with apologies from the NOW TV team.

Comments (1)

Andrew

21st April 2015

I have had the same problem for both episode 1 and 2 of season 5. Initially thought it was something to do with my set up. However everything else seem to stream perfectly well including the films i have watched on Now tvin the past and with a download speed of 70mb it really should work. Very disappointing it basically means i cant watch it when it comes out. sort this out Sky its not like you didn't know this was coming.

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